The average fine paid by Scottish Water over the ten years was £4,700, with fines for 28 of the pollution breaches below that. The company, which is owned by the Scottish Government, turns over £1 billion a year.

The relatively low level of the fines has prompted concerns that they are failing to deter Scottish Water from making blunders that annihilate wildlife. One environmental group is now calling for the company’s senior managers to be made personally liable for pollution.

Whisky and golf, two industries that help define Scotland around the globe, have been exposed as major environmental offenders by a government watchdog.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has condemned the performance of distilleries and golf courses across the country as “poor” because they have broken the rules by taking more water than permitted. Farmers and other businesses have also come under fire.

Sepa has further criticised more than 200 operators for failing to say how much water they used. They include more farmers, golf courses and distilleries, as well as Edinburgh Zoo, Scone Palace in Perth and the US property tycoon, Donald Trump.

Sepa regulates the removal of water from streams, rivers, lochs and the ground to protect wildlife, limit pollution and ensure that the precious natural resource is fairly shared. It will take legal enforcement action against businesses that persistently fail to comply, it warns.

The health of paddlers, swimmers and surfers at 14 beaches across Scotland has been put at risk by pollution from overflowing sewers and farms, official figures reveal.

The annual survey of the state of Scotland’s bathing waters, due to be unveiled by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) this week, will show that contamination from human and animal faeces this summer has been worse than last year.

The two dirtiest beaches were at Heads of Ayr in South Ayrshire and Lunan Bay in Angus, which suffered so much pollution that they failed to meet basic sewage safety limits introduced 38 years ago. Last year, no beaches in Scotland breached these limits.

But this year three samples of water at Heads of Ayr in May and August contained levels of toxic E-coli bacteria in breach of the legal limits. According to Sepa, this was because heavy rain caused “sewer overflows” and washed animal wastes from farmland and urban areas.

Another two beaches – Irvine in North Ayrshire and Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders – also recorded five sample failures between them. But four of these are liable to be discounted because they were correctly predicted by electronic warning signs at the beaches.

Ten other beaches in Ayrshire, Argyll, Edinburgh, East Lothian, Angus, Moray and Highland had single water samples that failed the safety limits this summer (see table below). The contamination from bacteria and viruses can cause ear and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, be fatal.

Millions of freshwater pearl mussels have been killed by sewage pollution of the River Spey in northeast Scotland over the last 15 years, according to scientific reports released under freedom of information law.

Experts from the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen have revealed that the number of mussels in the river has halved from 10 million in 1998-9 to five million in 2013. They blame high levels of phosphorus and other pollutants in sewage discharges for the decline, along with other factors.

Freshwater pearl mussels, a globally endangered species that can live for more than 100 years, are among the UK’s most protected wildlife. They hide at the bottom of clean, fast-flowing rivers and have long been victims of illegal fishing for the pearls they sometimes produce.

But the mussels are also under threat from pollution, the scientists warn. In detailed draft reports for the Cairngorms National Park Authority in May and June, they argue that the environmental standards set for the Spey are far too lax.

Concentrations of phosphorus in the Spey "are generally too high and of greatest immediate concern,” they say. Standards under the European Union’s water framework directive "have been set considerably higher than they should be, possibly by 1-2 orders of magnitude”.

Eight beaches across Scotland officially condemned as “poor” because their polluted bathing waters make people sick have been given prizes for “good water quality” by the government-backed charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB).

The awards have been denounced as “worthless” by environmentalists and criticised as “embarrassing” by politicians. They have earned KSB nearly £20,000 in application fees from local authorities and others.

A new analysis by Sepa has rated 20 of Scotland’s most popular bathing waters as “poor” because they fail to meet European pollution limits currently being brought into force. The waters are badly contaminated with toxic bacteria like E-coli from overflowing sewers or animal wastes washed off the land.

Yet eight of these dirty beaches - in South Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Fife, Angus, Aberdeenshire and Moray – have been celebrated by KSB as “some of the cleanest and best managed beaches in the country”. One – Central Beach in Nairn – was chosen by the Scottish tourism minister, Fergus Ewing MSP, to launch the awards two weeks ago.

Near Cringletie in the Scottish Borders, the river is starting to meander again. For the first time in two centuries, Eddleston Water is being allowed to flow down to join the Tweed in Peebles as it once used to - gently, lazily and naturally.

Since the early 19th century the water has been progressively straitjacketed. Cutting through the green, curving countryside, it has looked like an unnatural slit in the earth, sliced straight by human hand parallel to the A703.

But in August, the Scottish environment minister, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, donned a bright blue hardhat and sat in a shiny orange mechanical digger to oversee the opening of a new bend in the river. It’s called “re-meandering”, and it’s modern-day engineers trying to undo the damage that’s been done by their predecessors.

In the past, to recoup land for roads, railways, buildings and farms, rivers have been redirected, realigned, and remade. The trouble is that this has tended to make them flow faster, moving more water, more quickly and causing floods in communities downstream.

The government’s pollution watchdog has been forced
to drop a dodge it has deployed to avoid testing popular bathing waters for
faecal contamination on days when the contamination is likely to be at its
worst.

Condemned for “cheating” by environmental
campaigners, Sepa has been ordered by the Scottish environment minister, Paul
Wheelhouse MSP, to correct the way it monitors for pollution this summer.

This weekend is the start of the official bathing
season during which Sepa monitors pollution from sewers and animal faeces at
Scotland’s 83 officially designated beaches. Bacteria and viruses in the water
can cause ear and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, can be fatal.

Levels of contamination are meant to be within
safety limits first laid down 37 years ago by European law, and due to get much
tougher over the next two years. But every year bathing waters breach the
limits because of sewers overflowing or waste from farm animals being washed
off the land.

The Ministry of Defence
(MoD) has been evading an international ban on dumping radioactive waste at sea
by defining thousands of uranium weapons lost in the Solway Firth as
“placements”.

Minutes of secret meetings
released under freedom of information law reveal that the MoD was worried about
breaching an inter-government agreement on marine pollution by firing depleted
uranium (DU) tank rounds into the sea from a military range at Dundrennan near
Kirkcudbright.

But officials found a way
round the problem, by arguing that the munitions were not being “dumped” in the
sea, but “placed” there. This is despite the fact that attempts to retrieve them
have failed, and their locations are unknown.

Campaigners have accused
the MoD of desperately resorting to “semantic trickery” to justify its plans to
dump more DU weapons in Scottish waters. Based on past practice, the MoD will
restart test-firing at Dundrennan this year, they say.

In the last 30 years, army
tanks have fired more than 6,700 shells into the Solway Firth from the range, containing
nearly 30 tonnes of DU. The shells pierce canvas targets set up on the cliff
tops, and then plunge into the sea.

A plan to allow ships to dump dirty water into one of
Scotland’s most precious and historic bays is facing a series of formal
complaints and the prospect of prosecution because of fears that it will
destroy a wildlife area and jeopardise a multi-million pound fishing industry.

Orkney Islands Council has run into fierce opposition for pushing
ahead with a proposal to allow oil tankers to dispose of their ballast water in
Scapa Flow, a large sheltered natural harbour famous for its military history -
and crucial for a nearby nature conservation area.

Environmentalists have angrily condemned the council for
countenancing “environmental madness coupled with financial folly”. They are
demanding that the proposal be withdrawn and that the councillors responsible be
“hounded out of office”.

Scapa Flow was mentioned in ancient Viking sagas and was the
main base for the British navy in both world wars. In 1919 the Germans scuttled
74 of their warships trapped there to avoid them falling into British hands.

Two of
Scotland’s popular beaches have broken 36-year old pollution safety limits this
summer, posing health dangers for swimmers, surfers and paddlers.

The Sunday
Herald can reveal that Heads of Ayr in South Ayrshire and Stonehaven in
Aberdeenshire will tomorrow be officially branded as failures for the
2012 bathing season by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Both
bathing waters have recorded levels of faecal contamination in excess of safety
levels agreed by the European Union in 1976. The contamination can cause ear
and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, be fatal.

At Heads of
Ayr, animal faeces washed off the shore during heavy rain were blamed for the contamination.
According to Sepa, this had “possibly” been combined with pollution from sewage
discharges.

At
Stonehaven, Sepa said there had been a “pollution incident” as well as heavy
rainfall. Two other beaches – Prestwick in South Ayrshire and Sandyhills on the
Solway Firth – narrowly missed been classified as failures because of new rules
which enable short-term pollution to be discounted if it is predicted and the
public warned.

Although this
year’s two official failures were fewer than last year’s four, the overall
level of pollution in 2012 was significantly worse than in 2011. As many as 49 other
bathing waters failed to meet the tighter guideline standard this year,
compared to 39 last year (see table below).

It has become a modern-day myth. The fate of almost 30,000 toy ducks, frogs, beavers and turtles lost in an accident at sea in 1992 has intrigued millions around the world.

Stories that they had somehow managed to migrate across the Arctic from the Pacific and circumnavigate the globe have proliferated. There have been numerous reports of them turning up years later on the east coast of the US and in Europe.

The truth, however, is less romantic, and much more disturbing. Along with billions of tonnes of other plastic wastes, they are disintegrating into tiny fragments of “plastic sand” that will pollute the planet for hundreds of years, threatening wildlife and destroying the environment.

“At the outset, I had no intention of doing what I eventually did: quit my job, kiss my wife farewell, and ramble about the Northern Hemisphere aboard all manner of watercraft,” he wrote in his book, Moby Duck.

Water and sewage treatment has left a “potentially nasty” legacy of 26 toxic sludge lagoons scattered around Scotland, an investigation by the Sunday Herald has revealed.

Tens of thousands of cubic metres of sludge contaminated with aluminium and other pollutants are being stored at sites near Wigtown, Barrhead, Coatbridge, Falkirk, Cupar and Inverness, as well as across Argyll, Aberdeenshire, Sutherland, Orkney and elsewhere (see table below).

An investigation into the safety of the sludge lagoons has been launched by the government company, Scottish Water, while environmentalists are demanding that the sites be cleaned up.

According to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), 18 of the sites are left over from when drinking water was treated with an aluminium compound to remove impurities. The resultant sludges have been contaminated with aluminium, which has been linked to breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other health problems.

“There is a possible risk of such aluminium leaching,” Sepa said, though its “binding nature” meant that it was likely to stay in the sludge. Other lagoons contained old sludges from sewage treatment that were “relatively benign”.

Prestwick in South Ayrshire and Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire have become the first bathing waters in Scotland this summer to fail sewage contamination limits first introduced 36 years ago.

They have both recorded two or more water samples with excessive faecal contamination since testing began on 21 May. This can give bathers and surfers ear and stomach infections, and in extreme cases can be life-threatening.

According to Sepa, the most likely cause of the pollution is the downpours that have plagued parts of Scotland in recent weeks. Heavy showers can cause sewers to overflow, and wash farm animal faeces from the land into the sea.

The failure at Prestwick “was likely caused by recent rainfall”, says Sepa. At Stonehaven, problems occurred because “a period of persistent and intermittently heavy rainfall coincided with a pollution incident on the Maxie Burn.”

A record number of radioactive hotspots have been found contaminating public beaches near the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, according to a report by the site’s operator.

As many as 383 radioactive particles and stones were detected and removed from seven beaches in 2010-11, bringing the total retrieved since 2006 to 1,233. Although Sellafield insists that the health risks for beach users are “very low”, there are concerns that some potentially dangerous particles may remain undetected and that contamination keeps being found.

Anti-nuclear campaigners have called for beaches to be closed, or for signs to be erected warning the public of the pollution. But the government’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said “no special precautionary actions are required at this time to limit access to, or use of, beaches.”

Elsewhere, the public has been warned about radioactive contamination on beaches. There are warning notices about radioactive particles on Sandside beach near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness, and at Dalgety Bay in Fife people have been barred since October from a section of the foreshore contaminated with radium from old military planes.

Sellafield has been monitoring a string of beaches along the Cumbrian coast every year since 2006. This was requested by the government’s Environment Agency, following the discovery of a highly radioactive particle on the foreshore 700 metres north of the site’s waste pipelines in 2003.

Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), the government-funded anti-litter charity, has come under fierce attack for giving high-profile “seaside awards” to beaches that have been officially condemned as badly polluted.

The revelation could deal a fatal blow to the credibility of KSB’s “empty and meaningless” beach awards, according to the campaign group, Surfers Against Sewage. Serious flaws in the awards had been exposed, it said.

This was denied, however, by KSB, which insisted that it was simply applying the current legal standards. The quality of the bathing water was only one of the criteria it used to grant awards, it said.

A new analysis by Sepa has revealed that 20 of Scotland’s official bathing waters would fail new pollution limits due to come into force in 2016. They will replace 36-year-old limits seen by many as out-dated, inadequate and unable to protect against illness.

Five of the beaches rated by Sepa as “poor” – the worst possible rating – were last week crowned by KSB as winners of their “coveted” seaside awards. They were South Beach in Ayr, Millport Bay on the island of Great Cumbrae in North Ayrshire, Seafield at Kirkcaldy in Fife and Stonehaven and Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire.

A further five beaches categorised by Sepa as just “sufficient” under the new pollution rules – the second-worst rating - also received awards from KSB. They were at Aberdeen, Kinghorn in Fife, Nairn in Moray, and Fraserburgh and Balmedie, in Aberdeenshire.

Alex Salmond’s plan to sell water to England has run into a barrage of criticism from experts, who warn that it would be impractical, polluting and horrendously expensive.

They point out that other solutions to the droughts increasingly afflicting the southeast of England would be much cheaper and easier. They include digging a new reservoir near London and transporting water from wet areas much closer than Scotland, like Northumbria, the Lake District or parts of Wales.

Last week the Environment Agency warned that some areas of England were facing a severe and widespread drought this spring and summer. Seven water companies announced hosepipe bans from next month, preventing people in southern and eastern England from watering gardens, cleaning cars and filling swimming pools.

Interviewed by schoolchildren, Salmond suggested that Scotland could help alleviate the long term shortages. It would be a “great thing” if Scotland became known as the “land of clean water”, he argued.

“We are going to develop our water company so it can do things internationally,” he said. “There might well be an argument at some time for the transportation of water resources. And because it costs to transport, you would sell it on that basis as an ongoing commercial transaction.”

Scottish ministers have written to the coalition government in London offering to assist if water supplies ran low. “We have massive resources, and we are willing to help put those resources to use, to help the southeast of England solve the strategic water shortage,” said the Scottish infrastructure secretary, Alex Neil.

Dangerous levels of sewage pollution have been detected at 18 of Scotland’s most attractive and popular beaches this summer, according to new figures from the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Four of the bathing waters have been so contaminated that they have now failed 35-year-old sewage safety limits for the season. They are Sandyhills in Dumfries and Galloway, Irvine in North Ayrshire, Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders and Lossiemouth East in Moray.

A further 14 beaches have also been badly polluted because they recorded single samples of seawater in breach of the safety limit (see table below). It takes two sample breaches to be deemed to have failed for the year.

The pollution comes from overflowing sewers and from farm animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal for surfers, bathers and paddlers.

“We are shocked and disappointed to hear that so many popular Scottish beaches and bathing waters have been polluted by sewage discharges this summer,” said Andy Cummins, from the campaign group, Surfers Against Sewage.

“This is a serious public health risk. With so many people using the coast to relax, surf and enjoy with their families, it’s vital that the alarming rate of raw sewage releases in Scotland is tackled immediately.”

A massive £4.8 billion of public money is being paid to multinational corporations to run sewage works that are plagued with breakdowns, pollution and pongs, an investigation by the Sunday Herald has revealed.

Internal reports from Scottish Water lay bare for the first time the scandal of the sewage contracts signed with private companies under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) backed by Labour and Conservative governments.

The problems at PFI sewage plants across Scotland have been so serious and intractable that Scottish Water has been pushing to take them back into public ownership. It has also been forced to pay out over £100 million extra to try and rectify some of the faults.

Yet communities around the country still have to endure nauseating smells, and many feel that they have been palmed off. Experts say their complaints are justified.

PFI was introduced as a way of trying to build public projects using private money. In the late 1990s nine PFI contracts were signed with private companies to build, refurbish and run 21 sewage plants across Scotland, dealing with half of the nation’s human waste.

According to Scottish Water documents, the sewage plants they inherited when they formed in 2002 cost nearly £600 million in capital costs. Contracts to run them cover periods of between 25 and 40 years and are costing around £130 million a year, giving an overall cost to the public purse of £4.8 billion.

The Westminster government is risking environmental disasters by scrapping emergency tugs in breach of its own expert advice, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

A leaked report prepared for the UK government’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warns that four tugs are needed to prevent “catastrophic” spillages of oil, toxic chemicals or radioactive waste from accidents at sea.

Yet UK ministers have decided to cancel the £12-million-a-year contract for the tugs from September in order to save money. Alongside plans to close coastguard stations and withdraw Nimrod rescue aircraft, this has provoked a storm of protest from the Scottish government and local authorities.

Withdrawing funding for the tugs was “reckless and wrong-headed”, according to the Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary, Richard Lochhead MSP. “It has potentially serious consequences for human and environmental safety,” he said.

“Recent incidents have underlined the vital role that these emergency tugs play in some of the most dangerous and sensitive areas of our coastline, and we continue to press UK ministers to reconsider their decision.”

Seventeen of Scotland’s most beautiful and popular beaches have again been contaminated with dangerous levels of sewage despite a three-decade effort to clean them up.

The pollution comes from overflowing sewers and from animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal for surfers, bathers and paddlers.

The preliminary results for the 2010 bathing season revealed by the Sunday Herald today have been condemned by environmental groups. But the poor outcome is blamed on bad weather by the government’s pollution watchdog.